


the wisdom we have lost in knowledge

by JaguarCello



Category: Hamlet - Shakespeare
Genre: Canonical Character Death, F/M, a vague sort of heaven
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-22
Updated: 2013-09-22
Packaged: 2017-12-27 08:10:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/976453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JaguarCello/pseuds/JaguarCello
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ophelia should have known that her heaven would be a vague, passive sort of place. But she didn't expect Hamlet to wander in.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the wisdom we have lost in knowledge

“I didn’t mean to do it, really,” Ophelia told Hamlet, wringing out her dripping hair until water ran in torrents to the damp grass. “I fell in, but the effort of getting up, getting out, was too much. It’s not that I’m lazy,” she added sharply, twisting her hand in her hands again, when his eyes flickered across her. “It’s just that – reaching for something that wouldn’t make me _happy_ , no matter how much I would have tried – “

 He looked at her again, dark suit still dark with blood. “I take it to mean that this is a barbed comment. I still can’t answer if I were truly mad. I thought maybe I was, but then perhaps I fell for my own mythology? Like you,” he told her, and she looked down at her feet. “My heart did belong to you, yes. But it was shattered into pieces – this is before your brother _stabbed_ me, that is, and even if it was for your honour, and your father’s, it hurt – and the shards were sharp. And love cuts both ways,” he mused.

 “You’re not mad again,” she said, slowly, as if trying to reassure herself as well as him. “You can’t be mad here.  You watched your uncle like a hawk, but the way he talked and acted didn’t reveal his soul, did it? Have you found him?” She glanced across the river-bank, to where Claudius sat serenely, looking at them.

“I don’t want to find him. I’m not sure you can kill people here, but if your brother hasn’t showed up yet then the rules aren’t hard-and-fast.” He looked towards his uncle, and frowned. “I still haven’t forgiven you for lying to me,” he said. The wind rushed through the dried reeds on the water’s edge.

 “I obeyed my father’s wishes. We – he – thought you had lost your mind. I mean, your frequent puns suggested you’d lost your wit a long time ago, but he thought you had gone insane. You – you were horrible to me,” she muttered, smoothing out the damp folds of her dress. “You’re still horrible to me, even though you’re dead. Must be something of a record – but you really are an immature little shit, aren’t you?” Colour had risen in her waxen cheeks, and Hamlet took a step back, almost slipping on the grass.

 “I never meant to hurt you,” he told her, softly, but kept his eyes fixed on her long nails.

“You told me you’d never loved me, you could not love me, you did not love me,” she said, voice barely controlled, and fists clenched.

“I don’t think I used those words – “

 “Yes,” she spat, “because you’re an oversensitive pillock with a need to prove your superiority by speaking in riddles!”

 “Thinking on things is what raises them to superiority or inferiority. I just read a lot of Sartre at university, that’s all. And I think I had a right to be sensitive, considering my mother had married the man who murdered my father. I’m related,” and his face was twisted with revulsion, “to a murderer, and a _whore_ ,” and he ran a hand through his hair.

 “Do you even know that your mother knew he was a murderer? I mean, it’s happened a lot, or from what I’ve seen of the machinations of human relationships from wherever we are. Footballers are pretty bad for this, it seems,” she added, sagely.

 “What?” he asked, looking at her as if she’d sprouted another head. “Well, I don’t know that. I resisted killing him for a very long time, didn’t I?”

 “So your indecisiveness deserves some sort of reward? Well done, for being a dithering idiot?” Her voice was fire, and Hamlet sighed.

 “What would you have done? If someone killed your father?” he asked, and then realised his mistake; her eyes narrowed.

 “You _did_ kill my father, and then I went mad. Really mad, not just play-acting. Grief does that to people – we don’t all turn into black-wearing, manipulative bastards. Thank God that emo music hadn’t been invented, all those years ago,” she said, and he raised his eyes to where he hoped the heavens had been, when he was alive.

 “It was an accident,” he reminded her, and she rolled her eyes.

 “No, Hamlet. Accident is, I don’t know, dropping a cigarette on your curtains. Or backing a car into another one. Not murder - and don’t look so surprised that I keep an eye on things, you know. What else would I do, moon after you? I’ve done enough of that for a hundred lifetimes,” and at her words, he sighed again.

 “I’m sorry,” he admitted, fiddling with the collar on his bloodstained shirt. “But you can’t admit that he was perfect, can you? He rambled on and on, he spied on you, he spied on Laertes – “

 “You’re far from perfect, and I still loved you,” she said, but she ducked her head, hiding her face behind her hair. He reached out to tilt her chin upwards, and she frowned, before twisting away.

 “He wasn’t perfect, no, but he loved me. He still does, I’d imagine, but I haven’t found him here yet. Where were you, when you realised where you were?”

 He smiled at her ruefully. “I was wandering. I was lost, in a wood, and all the trees looked the same but I knew that each held a different and terrible secret, and that I had to leave that grove. It took weeks, but then I saw a shaft of sunlight, and found my way to this clearing,” and he gestured to the stream.

 “I was here. I sat up in the river, drenched. I still won’t dry off,” she said, and almost laughed. “I tried to sit in the sun, to warm up, but I just slept, and woke up in the river again. Did you ever try to wash the blood out of that shirt?” she asked, pointing at the ever-blooming stain.

 “It’s still bleeding. I can feel the poison, beading under the skin and dripping into my brain. It feels a little like the madness, or maybe more like love. But the stains won’t fade,” and she nodded.

 “Something rotten in the – “ he began, and she laughed at that.

 “Do you know how many people have said that and will say that, forever? They come in here, they float down the river or sail down in boats or climb down from the trees, and they quote your words to me, as if I didn’t know them all by heart." He flinched at that, but she ignored him. "As if they didn’t burn me when I hear them. Your words are less potent here, somehow. Less rhetorical. I prefer it." She glanced down the river, to where the water flowed clear and fast. "They turn up here, thinking it's theirs to have. I have to make them leave - they have no idea who I am, of course. “Most dejected and wretched,” they laugh, when they think the wind will snatch their words.” She looked at her feet again, but this time, when he tilted her chin up, she kissed him back. 


End file.
